


Ecce Ancilla Domini!

by adulescentiaMaia, somniferumKore (soglideaway)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-22 16:40:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/611946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adulescentiaMaia/pseuds/adulescentiaMaia, https://archiveofourown.org/users/soglideaway/pseuds/somniferumKore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her face in the dark was just one of many, but this time the Handmaid saw her. She saw long eyebrows, full lips with a wide cupids bow, and an aquiline, highblood nose. She saw her as she was, in the striped garb of her class, holding the body of a wriggler, and she saw her as she would be, bound in chains and struck through the middle by a harpoon. For a moment they stood still, silent and waiting for the other to move. The Dolorosa betrayed herself with a tremble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ushauz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ushauz/gifts).



At first, when she was dragged through the seas of Lord English’s wasted time, she had been too angry to see. She was whipped sickeningly up through executions played out backwards, forging her way through endless cycles of the same eleven tired lives in triple speed till all the blood ran in the same colours. Eventually, she learned to vary the pressure of their stories, to distinguish between artery and vein and capillary. She felt the delicate interactions between one another, and between a society unaware of their interplaying roles. 

In these days she missed the chaotic coloured interplay of her youth, before wearying clarity had befallen her. When she became able to pinpoint and crystallise the moments of their deaths and the pain twisted into their mouths, she missed her wild fury in which she had drunkenly careened through time without any real understanding. At first each painful twist in their story was a crack in a mirror and each step she took became precise and measure so that time slowed and she remembered their misery and it cut her feet wherever she walked. In more time still they became instead components which she must simply reexamine, and it became to her a bigger picture once more, moved away from the glass splinters of their pain and towards an acknowledgment of their social order and a heated contempt of it’s petty power and insistent outdated force. Bloodhatred was her masterpiece, one carefully orchestrated by pulling the right strings and pushing the right people off the right cliffs. It was a meaning not self-inflicted, but eventually self-motivated, and a meaning to replace the luxuries of linear spacetime and mortality.

Slavery was her only constant, and the more she saw the more convinced she became that all were subject to it in one form or another. She visited the royal courts often, at the caprice of a queen, and satisfied herself in the knowledge that even she was destined to be owned by another. She thought this as she unbound the souls of debilitated mustardbloods. Their bodies, ravaged and spent, were nothing on what the Condesce might be in time. Compassion, for the Handmaid, had been stayed a long time since by trained bitterness. Her job was easier that way.

The title she earned as both goddess and Demoness frightened and amused her. In spite of her world weary stance she was but a girl, and a slave-child at that. She at first felt sick with the idea she might be worshipped, ran her hands over her slight wrists and thick thighs, searching her skin for a reason she could be revered. She saw soon enough that her only reverence would arise in requests for her to keep away. It was with a quiet earth-shattering sort of pang that the absolute loneliness of this notion overtook her and she did not travel for stretches of time, spent many long days feigning sleep on the emerald silk at the bottom of her bed. When she did come around it was with vigour and a colder tongue; she would be feared and it would not be bad for she still, in the end, had great power. She collected the customary libations of skull and quartz up in her skirts and left chills in the hearts of those who had offered them. 

The brooding caverns did not leave shrines of skulls and quartz. They had no skulls to spare after the bodies were taken away for industry. Instead they left offerings of abundant bouquets taken from above-ground, flowers which bloomed only during the day. Wrigglers died often in their care, the weakest highbloods and strongest lowbloods writhing in their death throes on the cave floors, and amongst them a figure in lime. The lights of her eyes filled the caves and the jadebloods could only return each larva to its cell. The Handmiad found this method most effective, if the least honorable. She had encountered the idea of eugenics whilst coming for the life of a prolific violetblood in centuries past, and had found an extensive paper of selective culling. Their demise was their own doing, she was merely their agent.

In sweeps to come, sweeps well beyond the lifespan of any other maroonblood, the Dolorosa would abandon her post for reasons unknown. Unlike her charge she was the subject of no story, and unlike her charge’s lover, she would not write any story herself. She would merely relinquish her duty, ascribed by tradition and blood colour, and take her place amongst a revolt. 

This is why, when the Handmaid met her in an underground channel, she faltered. The Handmaid knew the woman as an inciter of disruption, and had not seen her in the caverns before- crawling with jadebloods as they were. Her face in the dark was just one of many, but this time the Handmaid saw her. She saw long eyebrows, full lips with a wide cupids bow, and an aquiline, highblood nose. She saw her as she was, in the striped garb of her class, holding the body of a wriggler, and she saw her as she would be, bound in chains and struck through the middle by a harpoon. For a moment they stood still, silent and waiting for the other to move. The Dolorosa betrayed herself with a tremble. 

The Handmaid, too, betrayed herself and reached out a claw to soothe her. The moment she did it she clenched her fist and prepared to leave. The Dolorosa grew pale in the rainbow light and the Handmaid waited for her to keel over and spoil her dress with the blood of the grub. Rather, she flickered twice and lit up. The corridor was illuminated by her skin, the walls appearing slick from water and the ground littered with larval exuvia, and all reflecting her light. The Handmaid raised her eyebrows.

The Handmaid dropped her hands to her side sheepishly. She wanted to examine her skin, to feel its increasing temperature under her cheek. She considered whether rainbowdrinkers retained any vestigial warmth.

“Don’t look at me.” The Dolorosa started to back away from the Handmaid into an arched doorway. She wasn’t sure how the Demoness worked but she hoped she might not notice. She ducked into the antechamber and threw the body into a trough for collection, then continued at a pace into the larger chamber. The caverns were constructed like a labyrinth, requiring a lifetimes working knowledge to navigate. The Handmaid followed her with ease, following the glow in the gloom. 

The room had a low ceiling, and was decked out in couches. On one wall was a bookshelf of crass paperbacks and handmade fashion magazines. At one wall was a rickety table laid out for tea, and a stove on which a kettle lay filled with water. The Dolorosa leaned on the back of a sofa and took a breath, facing away from the door. The Handmaid froze in the doorway and expected a flash of lime to burn her eyes. No such flash occurred and she prayed that she was beyond her master’s gaze. That, or he didn’t care. 

“Do you want coffee?” Finally, the Dolorosa turned to her and motioned to the table. The Handmaid waited for her to say something else, to address it to somebody. She nodded, at length. She had not had coffee before. “Sugar?” The Handmaid nodded.

“Sit down. You look like death.” The Dolorosa smiled to herself while the kettle boiled, and looked over her shoulder to find the Handmaid looking bemused. She rolled her eyes. “I take it you’ll be leaving soon. Do you speak?”

“That is rude.” The Handmaid took the coffee from the Dolorosa’s hand and set it on the table to cool. “I can speak clearly. I don’t get to often.” The Dolorosa sat on another sofa nearby with her own cup and placed her feet on the low coffee table. 

“I assumed there were more of you? Surely there are too many trolls to send across to the other side for just one of you.”

“You would be surprised. I have time on my side.” The Handmaid smiled expectantly. The Dolorosa smiled, too, nervously, as though aware that she were missing something.

“I hate to be rude but what are you doing here? I place of birth is no place for an agent of death now your deed has been done. Under the circumstances I hope you understand why you might not be welcome.” She did not meet the Handmaid’s eyes, as she had not their entire conversation. It was perhaps out of guilt though more likely that the strobing lights made her uncomfortable.

“It is not my fault. You understand? I was born to do a thing I did not want to do. I have no choice.” The Handmaid lowered her eyes and she looked at the dark liquid of the coffee. Her eyelashes were long and painted red, lowered over her pupils and shielding the room from their light. “It would be kind of you to let me stay a while.” 

“Why should I pay you a kindness when you carry out that which you do? We know what you do, Demoness. Are you an Imperial servant?” She withdrew a tube of lipstick and toyed with it in her hands. 

“I am a part of something greater than your Empress. One day she will take my place. But we must not speak of that.” She took a large gulp of her coffee and reveled in its bitter taste. She closed her eyes and the world was dark, her tongue numbed by the heat and the strong taste she almost felt like nothing.

“How can I offer you kindness? You will still come for me when my time draws to a close. You will never let our people go.”

“You will never let yourselves go. It is not me who upholds the prejudices which you lay upon yourselves.” The Handmaid spoke with her eyes closed. “Sit on this sofa with me.”

The Dolorosa continued to thumb at her lipstick and made her way to sit at the other end of the couch. It gave under her, soft and yielding. The Handmaid touched her hand. Without thinking she drew it away. “You’ve come here for something.”

“I’m unseen here. I may endure something later, but I do not care. I want to be a troll.” 

“You have the culling down.” The Handmaid smiled honestly and the Dolorosa expelled a breath she was not aware she had been holding. “What can I give you?” She could not explain why she had said it, except a sense of awe which had lodged itself in her chest. It had been all that she could do not to fall to her knees the moment the Handmaid had appeared.

“I would like you to touch my cheek, and lay a hush on my ear.” 

“But why me, when I have not known a moirail?”

“I want it before you are lost to another.” The Handmaid opened her eyes and met the Dolorosa’s eyes of gold. In decades to come The Handmaid would come for the Dolorosa’s life and she would watch as her words would make sense. For the Handmaid this was sweeps in the past. 

“When I was a young girl I did not want this job and in time I will leave it.” The Dolorosa placed a palm to the Handmaid’s jaw. She had the pulse of livestock, quick and regular as a clock and unfaltering as her quest. 

“You will find another in time. You will be remembered for it.” Her gaze did not leave the Dolorosa’s when she shuffled across the seat of the sofa to be held closer. The Dolorosa shook her head and drew the Handmaid close to her. 

“How could we ever forgive you?” Her words fell on the Handmaid’s pointed ears as a shoosh. 

“Take peace where you can, Dolorosa.” The Handmaid kissed the woman’s palm.


	2. Chapter 2

The Handmaid appeared from the shadows of the seadweller’s ship. Salt air filled her nostrils. She could see the mid-morning gloom lifting through a porthole, the green moon watching her on the horizon. This was her respite, short and aberrant as it was deserved.

Mere hours ago she had looked on the culmination of her work, her ears still ringing from the scream of the forlorn. She had looked on the players of her orchestration, as one fell, and one fled, and one abandoned his post. She could not find it in herself to lament, for their world was one amongst many, and its slow disassembly a step closer to her freedom.

Only the oliveblood remained at the mutant’s side. The others were sold into slavery and the Demoness remembered an encounter sweeps ago. One bound by the colour of the clothes on her back, who found freedom briefly only to be captive once again, her colour determining her existence. A slave-girl in jade was the prize of any collection, put to work underground and spun into exotic tales, then prized further for her rarity. 

The Handmaid found her below deck, manacled to the ship’s wall. Green lines trailed down her face like rivers on a map. Her dark lips were swollen and cracked through with deep emerald. Her eyes were closed and inflamed. She sat on a pile of richly coloured throws and illuminated the chamber softly with her skin. 

“I came back.” The silence cracked under her words. The Dolorosa’s face whipped around to look at her, her eyes bright. More tears ran down her face. 

“Sit with me. Please, sit with me.” The Handmaid joined her on the floor and used her wands to free her hands. “How did you get here?”

“I don’t know.” It was only half-lying. She did not know the mechanisms through which her transportation or time-travel worked, and lying by emission was standard when interacting with mortals. 

“Can you free me?” The Dolorosa pulled herself onto her knees and clasped the Handmaid’s hands. 

“Not this time. The time will come.” The Handmaid made to peel her hands away, but her hands were soft and cool. She held them back. 

“I understand what you meant when I last saw you.” She tried to smile, and moved her thumb across the back of the Handmaid’s hand pleadingly. “Why couldn’t you stop it.”

“I don’t have that power.” She dropped her wands to the floor. “I’m sorry.”

The Dolorosa smiled solemnly. Her teeth were long and sharp, punctuated by a pair of fangs which rested on her lower lip. The Demoness raised a hand to stroke one with a nail, and pricked her finger on its tip. Burgundy beaded for a second, then ran down the length of her claw, crossing her palm and curling around her wrist. 

“Are you hungry, Dolorosa?” She asked. The Dolorosa nodded, and sucked at the finger proffered to her. A moment passed in silence while she lapped at it, then she stopped and kissed the Handmaid’s exposed shoulder. The Handmaid smiled, too, ticklish, and turned her head to offer her neck. The Dolorosa’s hair prickled her ears, and her teeth punctured the skin almost without pain, so sharp as they were. The pain eventually came as a delayed sting. They sat in the quiet, but for the Dolorosa’s hum, for some time. The Handmaid grew lightheaded, and considered the conditions of her immortality, whether the Dolorosa’s condition was catching, or should she die, how long it might take for her to be revived. Her sight grew tunnelled only temporarily before, in a rush, her blood was replenished. The process came in cycles, between faintness and the surprised jolt of her pump biscuit at the recovery of a pint of blood. 

Finally, the Dolorosa pulled away, eyes sleepy and cheeks flushed viridian. The Handmaid let her collapse into her lap and have her hand pushed into the Dolorosa’s hair. She raked her nails through the woman’s hair and solicited a trill of chirps. The Handmaid jumped, and the Dolorosa turned her head to wink at her. 

“Is that what trolls do?” The Handmaid tried to keep disdain from her voice. She was evidently unsuccessful as the Dolorosa snorted.

“Under some circumstances. Don’t stop. And thank you for the blood.” 

The Handmaid returned to her post tentatively, carding hair through her fingers and rubbing at the scalp. Her hair was dirtied by grease and dried blood, but the Handmaid paid no heed to it. Her industry was death and if anything the grime only made her more comfortable. Her caresses extended to the Dolorosa’s horns, regular as her bloodclass would denote. They were covered in a down of velvet, and the Handmaid smoothed the base with her thumb, where thick, chitinous skin met nap. The Dolorosa sighed in contentment. 

The Handmaid shivered. She approximated a life on Alternia without their bonds, in a sweeter form of moirallegiance than this. The Dolorosa brought the Handmaid’s other hand to her lips and kissed each claw. 

“Do you still think of me as Death?” Her hand rested in the Dolorosa’s hair. 

“You are terrible at this, Handmaid.” She shook her head to reinitiate the shooshing. “You don’t have to define yourself by your service.” 

Another moment passed in silence. Above deck the boards creaked as someone passed above them. The boat lurched. The Handmaid began to rise from the floor. The Dolorosa sat up and pressed a hand to each side of the Handmaid’s face. 

“Don’t go yet.”

“I’ll have to go soon. My keeper will be growing impatient.” 

“You needn’t be Death, here. I don’t want another night with Death. I’ve lost someone dear to me, but you aren’t the one who took him away. The Empire took him away, Death was only its agent. Whatever you are, you’re the Handmaid to it. I don’t hold you responsible.” She pressed a kiss to the Handmaid’s lips, to her cheek, to each eyelid. She pushed her hands through the Handmaid’s hair, shorn ragged at the back, and curled her fingers around her horns. The Handmaid surprised herself with a warble which started behind her nose. 

A porthole in the ship’s hull showed the pink sun and a stream of stars across the sky, amodst scarlet clouds. The Dolorosa pulled the Handmaid back onto the floor beside her. They lay in the pile, cheek to cheek. 

“I still visit the shrines the people leave to me. Nobody higher than your cast ever left them.” The Handmaid held her hand tightly. “I’ll stay as long as I can.”


End file.
